How to Start a Blog ?

Beginning a blog is really not as difficult as some might believe it to be, though it does take patience and it takes effective marketing, and promotional skills to help it gain the visibility you want.   There are many steps to starting a blog however.  The choices can be intimidating to someone who is new on the scene, but they shouldn’t be.  The very first thing any good blogger wants to do is decide what it is they want to blog about.

Decide what you want to Blog About

Now, in order to have a powerful blog and one where people will want to tune in, you have to choose a topic carefully.  You don’t want to blog about what is already common and well known; or if you do, you want to put a new spin on it to help boost its popularity.  You want to go with a topic that you are endeared to, and of course that you are very knowledgeable about too.  In order to prove your credibility to an audience your writing has to make a statement, not just be a bunch of fluff and stuff.  What are your passions, and what do you really enjoy talking about.  Hone in on these and decide what would be the most popular and worthy for a blog.  Remember though, you want to gain a readership, so don’t go with some stuffy boring topic such as: “Devising Paper Airplanes,” because no one is going to find it fascinating.

Choose a topic for your blog which is according to your Interest and you think that you can write very well about that topic.

Choose a Right Domain name

Domain name or website is the first thing which attract visitor to your blog. Choose a domain name which suites to your topic. Get that name which is short and have some logic in domain name. If you are looking for Domain names then you can use Name Tumbler or Namestation to get some cool names.

You can buy domain from Godaddy , Domain.com or Namecheap. There are many sources available to buy domain name.

Paid Hosting or Free Hosting

Some blog sites host the blog themselves, but you have to determine if that is really going to be in your best interest or not.  It all depends upon what your personal goals are with your blog.  If you want to be found easier than you might want to consider doing your own hosting, and there are many ways you can choose to do this.  Prices are varied too; it just takes some time and research. You can use Hostgator , Bluehost or Godaddy hosting to host your website. They have monthly packages and yearly packages as well.

While some bloggers do simply go with the hosting provided, they might not gain the visibility that they were hoping for.  It really is personal preference here.  WordPress happens to be one of the best sites for hosting a blog, as it does gain a lot of traffic, yet the competition is high at the same time.

On the flip side of the coin, when we mention free hosting, you can’t really view anything as free these days.  The bad thing about going this route is you don’t have your own domain, meaning you’re very limited in what you can and can’t do.  You’re also dependent on the hosting service to stay running efficiently and of course, without any glitches.  WordPress, on the other hand happens to offer your own domain name and the rates for this service are very flexible.  The fees are set up on an annual basis, normally found to fall in the $30.00 range.  You can grow much more fluidly through a service such as this one than one that was previously mentioned. There are many websites who are offering free blogs like Blogger , WordPress , Blog.com , Webs.com and many more.

Install WordPress in 5 Minutes

well once you have purchased hosting and domain name then you can get your blog up on WordPress in just 5 minutes. yes you can install it in just 5 minutes. Hosting providers usually provide you an Cpanel for your website which is like a CMS, Login to Cpanel of your website to add WordPress in your website. Now you can use softcalous to install WordPress or any other platform in your website. Install WordPress in your home page and you are ready to go.

Choose Best WordPress Theme

Once you have installed the WordPress in your blog then the time has come to decorate your blog with good design and theme. WordPress usually provide a lot of themes free of cost. You can use those themes to your blogs and if you want to buy some paid themes then you can have a look on theme forest or many other websites to buy handsome looking themes.

Build Traffic on your Blog

well there are many bloggers who can blog about new things in their blog but they do not know how to get traffic and how to rank their posts for specific keywords. Try to communicate with other bloggers on their blogs and try to leave excellent comments in their blogs so that they can see what they are doing. Do SEO for your blog and get some keyword ranked so that you can get traffic from Search engines.Search engines are the best method to get traffic for Long term.

Customization of your Blog

Once you’ve carried out your research and decided who you’re going to go with for hosting, and what platform you choose, be it Word press, or maybe even Blogger, then you can skip on in to customizing your blog.  Word press has great options, and if you understand a little Html coding or even My SQL, or PHP, then you can do a little more personal style.  You can also outsource this type of work and have someone do the style and theme for you.  The majority of the fun comes in with the styling of the site.  Furthermore, keeping the content fresh and new guarantees you new visitors, as well as keeping your existing ones engaged and holding on for more.  You can grow in popularity in no time if you learn the tactics just so.  As was stated, the blogging competition is fierce, so make it count.  Give readers a reason to want to tune in to what you have to say.  The following below bulleted points could help make you stand out and gain more credibility for you.

• Not only do you need to gain an audience, but you need to seek out what is called, ‘blog aggregators’.  These people will provide links to you, or even RSS feeds so that when you update your blog your new post will show up on their pages for a larger audience impact
• Put up interesting news information.  You can go to Yahoo, or even Google, and put a twist on a newsworthy article at one of these sites.  People who already tune in to you will read it at your blog versus going somewhere else.
• It takes time to build traffic, as well as a reputation.  This is a competitive area, so don’t let a non-readership for the first few months dismay you, keep plugging away.
• Readers love creativity, so always try and incorporate some images into your post.  This also spreads the word about your blog, making it stand out and grow in popularity.
• Always make sure you’re writing is edited, meaning spell check it and check for grammatical errors.  If you’re sloppy then you’re not going to be projecting the image that you really want too.
• Get traffic to your Blog using Search engine optimization but keep away from Google penguin and Google panda update.

Do not give up in the start !

Yes this is one of the biggest mistakes of new bloggers who just give up in the start and never try to share some thing creative or some new ideas with others. Blogging is not a work of one day, you need to do blogging for atleast 1-2 years to get at a good place. Slow and steady wins the race.

Hopefully these points and tips have helped to enlighten you on how to start your own blog.  It really does seem complex, but it isn’t.  You just have to be willing to dedicate yourself to the task if you’re going to have it gain the notice you want it too.  Many use a blog to draw traffic to their website, so if that is your goal then make certain you’re doing it right the first time.  It depend on you that you that how you work and how much capability you have !

Saif Ullah is an SEO & Internet Marketing expert working as a social media marketing manager. He loves to play with gadgets and Google. He has been running Saif Ullah Butt for sharing his personal adventures in Internet life. You can catch him on Facebook. Do you want some guidelines in SEO ? Get Quote Now for SEO !